The Corporate Philanthropist: The Global Water Crisis - Page 3
Page 3 of 10
The Water Crisis: A New Way Forward
In order to meet the Millennium Development Goals, which include the target of halving the proportion of the population without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015, we must invest $10 billion every year in water and sanitation. While the debate continues about whether water is a human right, the fact remains that not all governments have the revenue base nor governance capability to meet the needs of their citizens, and philanthropy and subsidies can provide only a fraction of the needed funding. Thus, the majority of the funding must be leveraged from the bottom up, and include market-based approaches. While the absolute poor will continue to require subsidies, more than 300 million people could pursue their own water solutions with access to the right financial tools. When I co-founded WaterPartners in 1990, we only focused on grant-driven models. In 2004, we launched WaterCredit, which facilitates microcredit loans for water and sanitation. WaterCredit models not only cost less by leveraging end-user payments, but they work within market forces, which makes them scalable. Plus, the data show that water systems requiring a significant financial stake from users are more sustainable.
Grants should be targeted to enable these scalable models to take hold. This requires finding the right local institutions and entrepreneurs, and helping them with business development services so they can grow their enterprises using commercial capital.
The philanthropic community plugs into this approach by providing “smart subsidies” that effectively fund the startup costs of these scalable models. Recent support from the PepsiCo Foundation is doing just that by helping us scale WaterCredit in India. A new grant from the Foundation of Renzo Rosso, founder of Diesel, will help to expand WaterCredit in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Supporting smart subsidies and marketbased solutions reflects one of the most significant shifts I have seen in the philanthropic sector: a move from providing direct services to creating system change. In the water space, this means fewer grants to simply drill wells and more funding focused on financial innovations that will give people the opportunity to pursue their own solutions.
Corporations, foundations, nonprofit organizations, multilateral organizations – as well as the people in need – each have a critical role to play in the overarching partnership that is critical to delivering universal access to water supply and sanitation. By engaging and empowering the people in need, and supporting sustainable, scalable initiatives in the water and sanitation space, together, we can help bring clean water and the dignity of a toilet to the millions of people living without these mo
Gary White is a 2009 recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. This prestigious award will provide direct funding and recognition of WaterPartners to help fuel largescale system change in the water and sanitation space. WaterPartners International is a U.S.- based nonprofit organization committed to providing safe drinking water and sanitation to people in developing countries. WaterPartners not only offers traditional, grant-funded programs, but is also harnessing the power of micro-finance to address the world water crisis.
